The Importance of Story Telling

[BASSER911414]

Anybody remember watching the WWE during a time when the heel used to get on your nerves so much that u wish the face would just beat his ass from start to end. The closest example I can give is King vs Michael Cole. It got annoying at the end but I always wanted King to just beat the living crap out of michael cole whenever they met.

I used to feel that way back in the day when heels used to steal victories over the faces. Yeah I was younger then but most adults watching felt the same way as well. Triple H was the biggest heel in the day and u used to hear the crowd boo him all the time. Edge and Christian were a humourous but heel tag team They were booed as well. Kurt Angle, Vince Mcmahon, Stephanie Mcmahon (she was called a ****), the Alliance guys etc. these guys were all booed not because they sucked but because they were the villains in the story.

Then there were squash matches. The Rock beating Bossman in under 4 seconds. Ultimate Warrior HHH, Stone Cold Tazz, Benoit Orlando Jordan. I dont know about u but they were fun to watch. It was humour. Nobody used to complain about the superstar. Nobody made comments like 'Oh they dropped the ball with that guy.' Why? Because nobody cared. They used to worry about what was put in front of them not the backstage politics. Benoit tapped out Jordan in under 25 seconds, the again in under 25 seconds, then again. I dont know about u but I used to laugh my ass off when I used to see that. Sometimes squash matches bring the humorous side out it a product. Embrace it.

Then there are brutal matches. Blood, chairshots to the head, weapons etc. are now frowned upon. Didnt anybody cheer (or boo depending on alignment) like hell when HHH pulled out a sledgehammer. Did nobody cheer when Mick Foley picked up Barbie. Remember the match between HHH and Mick Foley at Royal rumble 2000. You had sledgehammers, chairs, barbed wire baseball bats and tacks. It was gruesome yet cool at the same time. And fans back then used to enjoy that suff. These days u have people criticizing it saying theres less wrestling more hardcore stuff. Im sorry u want wrestling watch ROH. U want storytelling watch WWE.

The divas. The divas division was something people drooled over. Many kids had their first hard on watching Torrie Wilson vs Sable Bikini contest at Judgement Day. Doesnt anybody remember than. The diva idols Trish and Lita started the same way as well if anyone remembers. Trish started by managing Test and Albert and seducing Bubba Dudley. She wore the tightest, shortest attires and had closeups of her boobs with the camera then zooming out. And lets not forget her making out with Vince Mcmahon in front of Linda. Lita had a better debut. Managing Essa Rios and then being rescued by the Hardyz. And all these divas which people love to hate. Kelly Kelly, the Bella twins, Eve, they were originally hired to do the same things the Divas before them like Torrie Wilson and Stacy Kiebler did. With them having learnt as much as they did is a pretty big accomplishment. Remember the Extreme Exposes. That stuff was hot. and who did that stuff. None other than Kelly Kelly, Layla and Brooke ( who is having a pretty decent career in TNA)

Another thing. The faces were cheered and heels were booed. There were little to no mixed reactions. On very rare occasions were faces booed ( rock at wm 18). These days its cool to boo the face. I dont care what people think about Cena. Cena should be cheered and ADR should be booed. Rey Mysterio should be cheered and Miz and R Truth should be booed.

This is what I believe the product has lost. I dont believe in Main event Matches being squash matches. and every match having blood. And I also know that its not possible with the current rating. I believe the fans have changed and have become hypocrites. You cant tell me these IWC guys who bash on the Attitude Era or post Attitude Era didnt enjoy what the WWE put out back then. Because honestly compared to those days. This era is stale. I understand that

Before you guys start bashing me without reason, read the whole thing, think about it and then comment. This is an honest mans honest opinions.

Your thoughts.

(My reps about to go down even worse than before)

 

[Nada]

I see your point, but like i wrote in another topic, the heels are simply given a reprint to the say the same **** the last chicken**** heel said when he tried to beat Cena (see Sheamus, Miz, ADR etc). "I am the best!", "I will win!", "I am better than all of you!", same generic stuff, its hard to draw heel heat when its so bland.

Biggest reactions to faces and heels are rooted in real life, people loved Austin because he would mimic their own fantasies of kicking their bosses ass, people loved Rock cause he was a funny, cocky, jock heel we all wanted to be, we hated Vince McMahon because he was the boss we hated. All these characters are "fake" and larger than life, but also very much rooted in american and western societies.

To get us to really hate a heel, he has to mimick something from our lives most of us detest. Why should we really boo Miz/ADR/Sheamus(when he was heel)/Swagger/Ziggler? They are just chicken**** heels.

But even a better question, why should we boo Mark Henry? To me he is a hero, a underappriciated (black) man, who was often seen as a failure, someone who had so many injuries, someone who has won almost nothing of significance in 15 years in WWE, someone we have actually grown up with, someone who finally wins the world title and i am suppose to boo him? Boo Mark Henry? Why would i want to do that? His story is very much like Rocky's (Balboa not Dwayne Johnson), a underdog, alittle slow, alittle dumb but with alot of heart and strenght.


Thats just a example of how they dont know how to create characters we really hate

 

[mikde_]

Dude, like i already said...Wrestling fans are smarter and wiser to the dark side of the buissness these days.

Personally i dont want a wrestler to go out take unneeded bumps and shorten their career/lives. I dont want a wrestler to go out there and risk getting Hep C by blading and never being able to be intimate with their wife or girlfriend ever again. In this day and age it's just not needed.

WWE pushed the envelope so far in the attitude era that in the long run it ruined wrestling. It got to a stage where people were taking huge bumps to little reaction because it was done every night. They had to slow down and go back to basics in order to bring back special moments and also pro long careers and lives. If thats a bad thing then may god strike me down.

The whole industry has evolved and moved on since then and it's probably time you do to. If you are not ready to do that then why not stop watching?

I dont want to sound a dick but this type of thread gets posted pretty much every hour and it's getting to a stage where i think the mods should create a sticky thread about it just like the john cena thread.

 

[Headman]

Raven had some nice thoughts on this a while back. He said that fans who cheer the heels aren't doing the heels any favor, they're just ruining the show. He also said it's the heels job to get booed so if he's getting bigger face pops than the baby face he's a shitty heel.

 

[Paralyzer Z]

Raven had some nice thoughts on this a while back. He said that fans who cheer the heels aren't doing the heels any favor, they're just ruining the show. He also said it's the heels job to get booed so if he's getting bigger face pops than the baby face he's a shitty heel.

freedom of speech man.

now to the OP.sure storytelling is important but it isn't the only thing. Match quality is also a factor in deciding how good a match.

And back to headman. People cheer who they want to cheer for. its not really ruining the product, regardless of what raven says im pretty sure buisness isn't going to go down because kids are mad at people cheering heels.

 

[Madeye36]

Chris Jericho used to have the problem of becoming a "cool" heel. He'd switch it up to make people boo him again. Just the simple things, he'd tell the ref to ask his opponent if he wanted to give up when he was in a headlock. People started mimicking it, Jericho stopped doing it. Look at CM Punk, he became one of the most popular wrestlers in the WWE by just telling the truth. No generic promos. Thats what needs to happen in todays wrestling world. Let the guys be themselves. SCST & the Rock were over by just being themselves!

 

[DirtyJosé]

Anybody remember watching the WWE during a time when the heel used to get on your nerves so much that u wish the face would just beat his ass from start to end. The closest example I can give is King vs Michael Cole. It got annoying at the end but I always wanted King to just beat the living crap out of michael cole whenever they met.

I think even the biggest Cena hater was ready to see him plow over The Miz come Wrestlemania. I get what you mean though; the old Rock/HHH feud made me hate Hunter pretty deeply, though I suspect that kind of booking these days would gather hatred as "being forced down our throats" much like the Nexus was. So, where are you going with this?

I used to feel that way back in the day when heels used to steal victories over the faces. Yeah I was younger then but most adults watching felt the same way as well. Triple H was the biggest heel in the day and u used to hear the crowd boo him all the time. Edge and Christian were a humourous but heel tag team They were booed as well. Kurt Angle, Vince Mcmahon, Stephanie Mcmahon (she was called a ****), the Alliance guys etc. these guys were all booed not because they sucked but because they were the villains in the story.

Um....yeah. Steal victories? You mean like the ways Sheamus and Miz would? You mean like Del Rio has before, or even Christian? I don't get it, are you saying that these guys don't count? And booed not for sucking but for being heels? You mean like Batista? Again, I'm not really getting where you're going with this, but I'm starting to get the sneaking suspicion that it's going to turn out to be yet another "Attitude Era was great, modern product sucks" kind of threads based on nothing more than personal preference and certainly not any kind of factual information. Sigh.

Then there were squash matches. The Rock beating Bossman in under 4 seconds. Ultimate Warrior HHH, Stone Cold Tazz, Benoit Orlando Jordan. I dont know about u but they were fun to watch. It was humour. Nobody used to complain about the superstar. Nobody made comments like 'Oh they dropped the ball with that guy.' Why? Because nobody cared. They used to worry about what was put in front of them not the backstage politics. Benoit tapped out Jordan in under 25 seconds, the again in under 25 seconds, then again. I dont know about u but I used to laugh my ass off when I used to see that. Sometimes squash matches bring the humorous side out it a product. Embrace it.

I agree that squash matches are not the burials that many fans claim them to be. I know that they are around for a reason, and that one can recover from the quite easily. What I'm not getting is how this relates to your point. Remember squash matches? They still happen, don't they? Sheamus putting Bourne out and Noble out permanently? Most of Zack Ryder's matches the last year or so? You keep asking us to "remember" things as if to make it sound like they don't happen anymore.

Then there are brutal matches. Blood, chairshots to the head, weapons etc. are now frowned upon. Didnt anybody cheer (or boo depending on alignment) like hell when HHH pulled out a sledgehammer. Did nobody cheer when Mick Foley picked up Barbie. Remember the match between HHH and Mick Foley at Royal rumble 2000. You had sledgehammers, chairs, barbed wire baseball bats and tacks. It was gruesome yet cool at the same time. And fans back then used to enjoy that suff. These days u have people criticizing it saying theres less wrestling more hardcore stuff. Im sorry u want wrestling watch ROH. U want storytelling watch WWE.

Those kind of things disappeared for a reason; Foley is lucky to have survived as long as he has and not be a cripple. WWE is lucky only one guy (so far) has had such extensive brain damage as to do something so tragic as to murder his family and kill himself. Things kind of things were cool to see, but not needed for the purpose of telling a story. One of the few things Cornette is right about is the nature of "garbage" wrestling; once it's become the norm it's no longer as exciting or must-see as it once was. WWE knows this, thankfully. TNA is starting to learn it.

The divas. The divas division was something people drooled over. Many kids had their first hard on watching Torrie Wilson vs Sable Bikini contest at Judgement Day. Doesnt anybody remember than. The diva idols Trish and Lita started the same way as well if anyone remembers. Trish started by managing Test and Albert and seducing Bubba Dudley. She wore the tightest, shortest attires and had closeups of her boobs with the camera then zooming out. And lets not forget her making out with Vince Mcmahon in front of Linda. Lita had a better debut. Managing Essa Rios and then being rescued by the Hardyz. And all these divas which people love to hate. Kelly Kelly, the Bella twins, Eve, they were originally hired to do the same things the Divas before them like Torrie Wilson and Stacy Kiebler did. With them having learnt as much as they did is a pretty big accomplishment. Remember the Extreme Exposes. That stuff was hot. and who did that stuff. None other than Kelly Kelly, Layla and Brooke ( who is having a pretty decent career in TNA)

Ugh. Hey, I get it; I'm a heterosexual guy too. But even then I found the placement of tits and ass in a product like wrestling confusing and pointless. If I want to see strippers and porn, I'll look it up on the internet damnit. I don't need that shit in wrestling. It just always feels like an add on, like "hey, here's some bitches to get excited about so you don't feel awkward for watching men in underwear for the last hour!". To be fair, I feel the same way about most any instance of blatant pandering to the male audience by assuming that tits will keep them interested in anything. It's insulting.

And, yes, I remember those old days of divas. I remember before they were divas; I remember when they were just women wrestlers. Sable, Marlena, Tori, Jaqueline, Ivory, Chyna...yeah, most of them were kinda gross looking but they could work some decent matches....I think. Honestly, I've just never really been into women's wrestling. No knock on them, but it just never feels important, never feels like the angles have anything special or unique to them, and I've never been able to get over how someone like Chyna or Ivory or Tori (or Nattie and Beth, to make a recent connection) would ever actually lose to some skinny cunt like Sable or The Kat (or Kelly Kelly). I suppose, however, that the same logic can be applied to the boys too, so I'll just drop this as my two cents and move along.

Another thing. The faces were cheered and heels were booed. There were little to no mixed reactions. On very rare occasions were faces booed ( rock at wm 18). These days its cool to boo the face. I dont care what people think about Cena. Cena should be cheered and ADR should be booed. Rey Mysterio should be cheered and Miz and R Truth should be booed.

I think people should cheer and support whomever they want to, but I also think they should focus on just that; CHEERING for who they support instead of BOOING the ones they hate. Let me clear that up a bit: I don't mean they should stop jeering, period. But just think of all those Cena haters, the ones who start in with the "CENA SUCKS" chants right after the fans chant "LET'S GO CENA".

What if those ******s started cheering for the guys they liked instead of wasting energy on Cena? What if they put that energy into another superstar instead of Cena? Because as they do it now it only goes to serve the purpose of pushing Cena as the most important guy around. If they really hate Cena, if they really want to see other people at the top, isn't it just more logical to focus on supporting who they want to see (see also: Ryder fans) instead of giving buzz to the ones they hate?

This is what I believe the product has lost. I dont believe in Main event Matches being squash matches. and every match having blood. And I also know that its not possible with the current rating. I believe the fans have changed and have become hypocrites. You cant tell me these IWC guys who bash on the Attitude Era or post Attitude Era didnt enjoy what the WWE put out back then. Because honestly compared to those days. This era is stale. I understand that

Before you guys start bashing me without reason, read the whole thing, think about it and then comment. This is an honest mans honest opinions.

Your thoughts.

Ummmm.....ok, so with all due respect WHAT THE FUCK WAS YOUR POINT? I mean, I've read and replied to worse posts around here, or at least worst ideas. I've disagreed with some of your points and agreed with the others, but at the end you don't really tie it up into anything. I read it, the whole thing, and thought about it, and I still really don't get what the point is. If anything I've shown in my response how things now are more or less the same as they ever were, with the exception of blatant sexual pandering and less blood and brutality.

The storytelling is still there. The smarky fans are still there. The heels and their habits of stealing wins are still there. I think you have a point about some of the fans changing, especially the vocal internet fans. For the most part they long for the old days, the old ways, and won't accept the product as is because they are no longer able to see it through the same eyes they had when they were 14. I think you are wrong about the current product being stale; again, with the exception of titties and headshots, the product is more or less the same as it's always been. It's just different people in different roles than it was 10 years ago. I think you really need to go over and explain what your point was because you do a very bad job of doing it with this post.

 

[Headman]

freedom of speech man.

now to the OP.sure storytelling is important but it isn't the only thing. Match quality is also a factor in deciding how good a match.

And back to headman. People cheer who they want to cheer for. its not really ruining the product, regardless of what raven says im pretty sure buisness isn't going to go down because kids are mad at people cheering heels.

I think his point was it's a heel's job to get booed so if they're coming off as cool to the fans they're not doing their jobs as heels. His point about the fans and "Smart" fans in particular is that if you're smart to the act and you like a guy why not help him out and boo the hell out of him instead of cheer for him? That is after all what he's out there trying to get you to do.

Chris Jericho used to have the problem of becoming a "cool" heel. He'd switch it up to make people boo him again. Just the simple things, he'd tell the ref to ask his opponent if he wanted to give up when he was in a headlock. People started mimicking it, Jericho stopped doing it. Look at CM Punk, he became one of the most popular wrestlers in the WWE by just telling the truth. No generic promos. Thats what needs to happen in todays wrestling world. Let the guys be themselves. SCST & the Rock were over by just being themselves!

Jericho is a good example. Jericho stripped away the aspects of his character that got cheered. And when people started cheering what he did next, he'd change that too. Jericho's one of the smartest guys in the biz and while he's extremely respected and loved by fans he can still make people hate him, which isn't easy to do. Jericho is an example of a great heel.

Let's look at the Rock on the other hand. When he turns heel he suddenly becomes funnier than usual. He still does all of his face spots and the people still pop for them. It's a testament to how over the Rock was, but it's also a testament to the fact that the Rock does not know how to play a heel. That's why he never stays heel for very long.

 

[The Kayfabe Kid]

I agree with the OP about times have changed but I dont think the problem is with storytelling. I think the problem is: wrestlers today switch back and forth between heels/faces so quickly and so many times that the audience doesn't associate them with that. 20 years ago, Hulk, Ric Flair, Andre the Giant, etc never switched. Whenever Andre came out as a heel, it was a BIG deal then. Nowadays, 1 episode they are a face, and the next episode they make a sarcastic joke and all of a sudden are a heel. I think people nowadays just cheer whoever is funny at the time, instead of the good guy / bad guy routine.

 

[Paralyzer Z]

I don't think you guys know what storytelling really is. As taught to me by hamler storytelling has nothing to do with relating to the storyline. Storytelling is the following, :sellling, playing to the crowd, and adding intruige to the match. whether or not someone switches from heel to face has nothing to do with the story told inside the ring.

 

[JeffTheRef]

Any time I think of story telling I think of King Kong Bundy. He wasn't a very gifted athlete, he wasn't "extreme", he wasn't an innovator, but anytime I used to watch him as a kid I always bought into the illusion that he was a big bully in the ring and his opponent was just trying to stay alive. He would walk around the ring like an over sized gorilla, and his opponent would run around the outside just trying to get away from him lol. You never really see more than a few elbow drops, a body slam, and some big punches, but there was a story being told.

 

[MrMojoRisin]

Telling a story in the ring is becoming a bit of a lost art, but I think a lot of that has to do with how the product is promoted these days, as well as guys not getting the experience of learning different styles and all the little nuances that go into building a match these days.

What makes a guy like Jericho so smart and such an effective heel is that he literally traveled the world to learn his craft. Canada, Mexico, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Smokey Mountain, ECW, WCW, WWE. Every place he worked there's a different style, and everywhere there's different tried and true methods of building your heat as a heel, or gaining sympathy as a face. He's learned all this, and I honestly feel it would benefit more guys to actually get out from under the WWE umbrella, travel the world, learn their craft and then come back.

But that's a little off topic. Storytelling is simply put telling the story of your match. As a heel, you should be underhanded and sneaky every chance you get if your a chickenshit heel, and just aggressive and dominating if your a monster heel. The face needs sympathy, and it's the heels job to make sure he gets it.

How often anymore do you even see something as simple as a heel doing something underhanded to injure a body part of the face, and then working that body part throughout the match to make the injury worse... and the face in turn actually selling the injury throughout the match so that the fans wonder if he can overcome the injury to get the win, and hate the heel for being unsportsmanlike enough to take advantage of that injury? Or even the commentators putting over the injury to help build the suspense? Usually even when you do see this nowadays, by the time it comes for the face to make his 'big comeback', the injury is completely forgotten and any suspension of disbelief on the fans part is thrown out the window.

That is just a simple, but effective story to tell in a match, but one that is rarely told anymore. There's so many more that aren't told either. Today it's more about guys needing to get in all their flashy moves and high spots, even if it doesn't always make sense to the match that they're being used.

 

[TWJC: The Beginning]

The original post has good intentions, but doesn't understand the mechanics of the show.

You see, the audience isn't uniform. Cena is doing everything he can, the audience isn't uniform so it doesn't matter. The same action (heel or face) gets a totally different reaction with different segments of the audience.

Fact is, storytelling still does exist. You saying "remember when" just makes you sound more like someone who can't get out of the past and nostalgia. WWE tells stories just like they always have. People who boo Cena generally like to boo Cena or they wouldn't be smiling and they wouldn't have done it for 5 years, they would have stopped making noise and stopped watching and WWE wouldn't still be number 1 in their timeslots.

Funny you mention storytelling. I think IN RING storytelling has been lost, not really in the WWE, but on the indies and other companies. Alex Shelley rarely tells a story in the ring, but he's heralded as this awesome in ring guy because he does quick complex shit. Doesn't ever sell a fucking thing or tell a story (unless Jimmy Jacobs or Bryan Danielson or Kendrick are leading him) but he's seen as this amazing wrestler. He's never been over with anyone except the net.

My point is, the net has no fucking clue what gets people over. It's why they think Orton is boring but think Shelley is amazing. Pro wrestling IS about storytelling and guys like Orton and Cena and Miz and Punk tell stories.

 

[Mercer the Ruthless]

I generally see what you're saying, however your argument seems to be more generated towards the fact people nowadays have taken the allure, the illusion and grandeur of professional wrestling away (it's also a bit convoluted). Speaking on that, "complete" knowledge of wrestling a double edged sword; many people, myself included have obsessed over learning many things if not everything regarding something and/or someone they look up to maybe even idolize, wrestling in this case. In the long run it spoils what you loved about wrestling when you were young. You can look at the same way a teenage girl loves Amy Whinehouse or Marilyn Monroe, they (the fans) are oblivious to what goes on in the back (Sex, drug addiction, company politics), behind the curtains. Same with Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Macho Man etc. when you're young and even when you're older you see the glits and glamor and the sheer fun, I guess that is the benefit of being a casual wrestling fan. But at that point you are not hardcore or considered a hardcore fan you're just casual, you don't really know much and if you come to a forum or a chat room you know nothing, then you get heckled for it (even though casual and Hardcore can be used as a pejorative amongst the community, that's another story).

Forgive me for ranting but your topic was about a lot more than just story telling issues, it's more about how fans analyze and over analyze wrestling picking it apart and nitpicking, it's all just... blah (only word I could come up with).

 

[Foshinzo]

I think I get what the OP is trying to say. I think he's trying to say...like, that the...something about crowds not popping like they used to?

If that's the case, I think it's just that there's an influx of talent the crowd still hasn't felt out, yet, and we're all kind of waiting for them to do something before we really care about them. Guys like Jack Swagger we know is a heel and we're supposed to boo him, but he hasn't done much to make us hate him other than be annoying. The Swagger Soaring Eagle was really dumb, yes. It was really annoying, too. Was it something you hate a guy for? No, you just think he's a joke and you laugh at him. It doesn't help either that a lot of heels today are more liked than the faces. I think that's why Sheamus' face turn has gone so well; people would rather cheer him than boo him. Same goes for the Miz, though he's still an alright heel. I think he's going to be one of the next big faces, but that's a whole other discussion.

I've also seen someone say that wrestling fans today are too, "smart," to boo and cheer like we used to. I sincerely don't think this is true. It's not like people used to be more ignorant than we are. Sure, we've got the Internet to spoil things and give us a place to talk about this ad nauseam, but how does that make us smarter? It makes us snarkier, it makes us more jaded, and it makes us harder to impress, sure, but it's not like crowds back then were stupid.

Back when crowd pops were loud, it was because you cared about the faces and you wanted to see them take it to the heels. Who in this company nowadays do you want to see? Who do you want to see get their heads kicked in? When I was a kid, I cheered for Roddy Piper because he kicked Cyndi Lauper and if I had to hear "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," one more time...but, the point is that even I wanted to see Hogan get the win at Wrestlemania.

If the WWE would stop pushing Cena down our throats, the non-fans would probably like him more. If Orton would go back to being a heel, we'd probably boo him again (at least I would...I still boo him as a face; he's awful,). They need to do some crowd surveys or group studies or something, because they need to figure out what people want to see, base their faces off of it and then make their heels the opposite of that.

Part of this could also be selective hearing. I may ignore Orton's loud pops because I don't want him to get one, or I may imagine louder pops for Daniel Bryan for the opposite reason. As for the OP's post, a lot of the things you've mentioned are still there; squash matches, etc. Didn't ADR just beat JoMo in like, eight seconds a couple of Mondays ago? WWE is still trying, I just think this is a down period for talent. A lot of guys on the roster aren't great mic workers, a lot of them (while being great athletes,) are bad story tellers outside of the ring, and I guess that's what the OP was trying to say.

 

[Remix]

Funny you mention storytelling. I think IN RING storytelling has been lost, not really in the WWE, but on the indies and other companies. Alex Shelley rarely tells a story in the ring, but he's heralded as this awesome in ring guy because he does quick complex shit. Doesn't ever sell a fucking thing or tell a story (unless Jimmy Jacobs or Bryan Danielson or Kendrick are leading him) but he's seen as this amazing wrestler. He's never been over with anyone except the net.

I'd disagree with you about Shelley. Not that I think he's a amazing (even if he is probably my favorite guy in TNA). He does rarely sell for longer than twenty seconds, but he's fun to watch, is charismatic as fuck, constantly tries to get the fans into the match and when he wants/needs to he can tell a story. Take the Aries/Kendrick/Shelley triple threat match from a recent PPV. When Aries ducks out of the ring to steal a pin Shelley is constantly on the look out for Aries to make sure that doesn't happen. But I digress.

As for the thread, storytelling is something that is quite often overlooked by some fans and wrestlers in favor of matches that feature cool moves and spots instead of doing something of substance in the ring. To me storytelling is something fundimental to a good match. Wrestling is, after all is the simplest story of all. Two guys are having a fight, one guys good the other bad. However, some guys just seem to forget to tell a story while they're fighting. Whether it's because they stop selling the instant they're on offence, or because when they're on offence they completely ignore what's happened in the match up until that point (for example wrestler 1 hurts his arm on a ring post. Wrestler 2 follows up on this by applying a half crab), not being consistent with their offence (such as working over an arm, then a leg then back to the arm for no reason), or doing things for NO FUCKING REASON which often leads to that random action being ignored a few moments later. It's things like that that get to me and they are done by many of the IWC's favorite guys (for instance DBD has a tendency to idly float between body parts, Seth Rollins pretty much ticks every box and I've already ackowledged Alex Shelley's failings as a performer) as well as the guys regularly blasted for being shitty (though some of them are actually quite good at storytelling).

But it's not a forgotten art, especially in WWE where the prescribed style is pretty much just basic story telling (the good guy gets beaten down by the bad guy, and then fights against the odds to win or gets cheated out of victory). It's something that can be taught to even the spotiest of spot monkeys (Daniel Bryan's stripped down his moveset a lot, Justin Gabriel can tell a story when he wants to, despite being a stereotypical criuserweight most of the time in South Africa (which he's also been thus far since his callup) and Richie Steamboat has been consistently improving ever since he arrived in FCW) but some wrestlers simply don't do so. Which seems to me to be a trait common in "indie guys". Not all of them (There are plenty of FCW guys past or present that suck in the ring), but it does seem that a lot of the guys who annoy me in the ring rose to prominence in ROH and other such places, to the point where I'm never going to watch another Bryan Danielson match, even though Daniel Bryan is rightfully called one of the best wrestlers in WWE right now.

 

[tripleddd]

in my opinion its down to lazy writing and lazy booking and money - get a ppv feud in 4 weeks job done move on next . lets be honest in the attitude era there were several stories ongoing and several in the pipeline. lets fast forward it today and how it could play out 1.undisputed champion - you would have at least 2/3 heels chasing the champ or have a heel champ and the main face getting screwed every way possibkle- look as wrestling fans we dont care about the story being re cycled just recycle it properly and give us some stories good gm vs bad gm there are loads of stories still to tell and it doesnt matter if itss pg or attitude you can still tell a story